We’ve made the decision to continue the operation of Revitalize Gillett, Inc. as an organization.  What direction should it take?  Our mission statement became our guide.

Our discussions concentrated at first on just what was the definition of the Community.  Our main service area had been the City of Gillett, and even more restrictively, the downtown area.  The Main Street Program required us to define a territory and concentrate on the development of that territory.  Our defined territory for the Main Street Program was the first two blocks of East Main Street, the same two blocks of Railroad Street, McKenzie Street down to and including Brian Bergmann’s service garage and the city park.  While the organization could go beyond the boundaries of this territory,  we would only be served by the Main Street Program for activities within the boundaries.  Since our focus was on the Main Street program,  in many instances we concentrated our efforts within that territory.  We thought this turned out to be a mistake and we needed to redefine our service area.

We did this by redefining our meaning of Community in the Mission Statement.  We decided that the word Community had two meanings for our purposes.  We have a community we need to serve and in many instances, a different community that wants to participate in the goals of our organization.

We finally decided that the Community we serve should not be limited to the City of Gillett or the two blocks of Main Street.  We decided that we needed boundaries for our service area but our services could have an impact on people outside the hard and fast boundaries.  For our service area, we decided the boundaries should be the same boundaries that define the Gillett School District.

To define the boundaries of the Community that wishes to participate in our programs we needed a different set of criteria.  Many of the people in the participation Community are in that Community because of a pride factor, not because of any direct benefit they can get from the service area.  The boundaries for this Community are not physical.  They include all those individuals who have some connection to the service Community and want to participate with their time, talents, effort, and/or resources. 

Now that we have redefined and expanded our service Community and our participation Community, what becomes of the Main Street Program?

TO BE CONTINUED

Contact us at revitalizegillett.org or 855-1554/855-1888 with comments or suggestions.